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Journal of Biosciences 2021After the completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003, the field of genetics has witnessed massive progress that spanned research in high-altitude biology also.... (Review)
Review
After the completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003, the field of genetics has witnessed massive progress that spanned research in high-altitude biology also. Especially the decade of 2010s witnessed the most of it and revealed various genetic signatures of high-altitude adaptation in Tibetans, Andeans and Ethiopians. High-altitude area, with its extreme environment, harbors a tremendous potential for gene-environment interaction, an aspect that could be explored by epigenetic studies. There are only four original articles till now which explore the epigenetic aspect of high-altitude adaptation or acclimatization. However, there is no comprehensive review to provide complete information on the genetic and epigenetic aspects of high-altitude adaptations. Hence, we have prepared this mini-review to summarize the genetic and epigenetic studies that have correlated the high-altitude adaptation or acclimatization, until recently.
Topics: Acclimatization; Adaptation, Physiological; Altitude; Epigenesis, Genetic; Humans; Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide
PubMed: 34840149
DOI: No ID Found -
Trends in Ecology & Evolution Mar 2022Recent archaeological discoveries suggest that both archaic Denisovans and Homo sapiens occupied the Tibetan Plateau earlier than expected. Genetic studies show that a... (Review)
Review
Recent archaeological discoveries suggest that both archaic Denisovans and Homo sapiens occupied the Tibetan Plateau earlier than expected. Genetic studies show that a pulse of Denisovan introgression was involved in the adaptation of Tibetan populations to high-altitude hypoxia. These findings challenge the traditional view that the plateau was one of the last places on earth colonized by H. sapiens and warrant a reappraisal of the population history of this highland. Here, we integrate archaeological and genomic evidence relevant to human dispersal, settlement, and adaptation in the region. We propose two testable models to address the peopling of the plateau in the broader context of H. sapiens dispersal and their encounters with Denisovans in Asia.
Topics: Acclimatization; Adaptation, Physiological; Altitude; Archaeology; Humans; Tibet
PubMed: 34863581
DOI: 10.1016/j.tree.2021.11.004 -
Current Opinion in Insect Science Jun 2022Both hosts and parasitoids evolved a diverse array of traits and strategies for their antagonistic interactions, affecting their chances of encounter, attack and... (Review)
Review
Both hosts and parasitoids evolved a diverse array of traits and strategies for their antagonistic interactions, affecting their chances of encounter, attack and survival after parasitoid attack. This review summarizes the recent progress that has been made in elucidating the molecular mechanisms of these adaptations and counter-adaptations in various Drosophila host-parasitoid interactions. For the hosts, it focuses on the neurobiological and genetic control of strategies in Drosophila adults and larvae of avoidance or escape behaviours upon sensing the parasitoids, and the immunological defences involving diverse classes of haemocytes. For the parasitoids, it highlights their behavioural strategies in host finding, as well as the rich variety of venom components that evolved and were partially acquired through horizontal gene transfer. Recent studies revealed the mechanisms by which these venom components manipulate their parasitized hosts in exhibiting escape behaviour to avoid superparasitism, and their counter-strategies to evade or obstruct the hosts' immunological defences.
Topics: Acclimatization; Animals; Drosophila; Host-Parasite Interactions; Larva; Phenotype
PubMed: 35240335
DOI: 10.1016/j.cois.2022.100896 -
Plant & Cell Physiology Jan 2020Frost stress severely affects agriculture and agroforestry worldwide. Although many studies about frost hardening and resistance have been published, most of them... (Review)
Review
Frost stress severely affects agriculture and agroforestry worldwide. Although many studies about frost hardening and resistance have been published, most of them focused on the aboveground organs and only a minority specifically targets the roots. However, roots and aboveground tissues have different physiologies and stress response mechanisms. Climate models predict an increase in the magnitude and frequency of late-frost events, which, together with an observed loss of soil insulation, will greatly decrease plant primary production due to damage at the root level. Molecular and metabolic responses inducing root cold hardiness are complex. They involve a variety of processes related to modifications in cell wall composition, maintenance of the cellular homeostasis and the synthesis of primary and secondary metabolites. After a summary of the current climatic models, this review details the specificity of freezing stress at the root level and explores the strategies roots developed to cope with freezing stress. We then describe the level to which roots can be frost hardy, depending on their age, size category and species. After that, we compare the environmental signals inducing cold acclimation and frost hardening in the roots and aboveground organs. Subsequently, we discuss how roots sense cold at a cellular level and briefly describe the following signal transduction pathway, which leads to molecular and metabolic responses associated with frost hardening. Finally, the current options available to increase root frost tolerance are explored and promising lines of future research are discussed.
Topics: Acclimatization; Carbohydrates; Cell Wall; Cold Temperature; Freezing; Homeostasis; Plant Roots; Polyamines; Soil; Stress, Physiological; Water
PubMed: 31626277
DOI: 10.1093/pcp/pcz196 -
Sports Medicine (Auckland, N.Z.) Sep 2022Physiological heat adaptations can be induced following various protocols that use either artificially controlled (i.e. acclimation) or naturally occurring (i.e....
BACKGROUND
Physiological heat adaptations can be induced following various protocols that use either artificially controlled (i.e. acclimation) or naturally occurring (i.e. acclimatisation) environments. During the summer months in seasonal climates, adequate exposure to outdoor environmental heat stress should lead to transient seasonal heat acclimatisation.
OBJECTIVES
The aim of the systematic review was to assess the available literature and characterise seasonal heat acclimatisation during the summer months and identify key factors that influence the magnitude of adaptation.
ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA
English language, full-text articles that assessed seasonal heat acclimatisation on the same sample of healthy adults a minimum of 3 months apart were included.
DATA SOURCES
Studies were identified using first- and second-order search terms in the databases MEDLINE, SPORTDiscus, CINAHL Plus with Full Text, Scopus and Cochrane, with the last search taking place on 15 July 2021.
RISK OF BIAS
Studies were independently assessed by two authors for the risk of bias using a modified version of the McMaster critical review form.
DATA EXTRACTION
Data for the following outcome variables were extracted: participant age, sex, body mass, height, body fat percentage, maximal oxygen uptake, time spent exercising outdoors (i.e. intensity, duration, environmental conditions), heat response test (i.e. protocol, time between tests), core temperature, skin temperature, heart rate, whole-body sweat loss, whole-body and local sweat rate, sweat sodium concentration, skin blood flow and plasma volume changes.
RESULTS
Twenty-nine studies were included in this systematic review, including 561 participants across eight countries with a mean summer daytime wet-bulb globe temperature (WBGT) of 24.9 °C (range: 19.5-29.8 °C). Two studies reported a reduction in resting core temperature (0.16 °C; p < 0.05), 11 reported an increased sweat rate (range: 0.03-0.53 L·h; p < 0.05), two observed a reduced heart rate during a heat response test (range: 3-8 beats·min; p < 0.05), and six noted a reduced sweat sodium concentration (range: - 22 to - 59%; p < 0.05) following summer. The adaptations were associated with a mean summer WBGT of 25.2 °C (range: 19.6-28.7 °C).
LIMITATIONS
The available studies primarily focussed on healthy male adults and demonstrated large differences in the reporting of factors that influence the development of seasonal heat acclimatisation, namely, exposure time and duration, exercise task and environmental conditions.
CONCLUSIONS
Seasonal heat acclimatisation is induced across various climates in healthy adults. The magnitude of adaptation is dependent on a combination of environmental and physical activity characteristics. Providing environmental conditions are conducive to adaptation, the duration and intensity of outdoor physical activity, along with the timing of exposures, can influence seasonal heat acclimatisation. Future research should ensure the documentation of these factors to allow for a better characterisation of seasonal heat acclimatisation.
PROSPERO REGISTRATION
CRD42020201883.
Topics: Acclimatization; Adult; Body Temperature Regulation; Hot Temperature; Humans; Male; Seasons; Sodium
PubMed: 35460514
DOI: 10.1007/s40279-022-01677-0 -
Journal of Zhejiang University.... Oct 2021Temperature is one of the major environmental signals controlling plant development, geographical distribution, and seasonal behavior. Plants perceive adverse... (Review)
Review
Temperature is one of the major environmental signals controlling plant development, geographical distribution, and seasonal behavior. Plants perceive adverse temperatures, such as high, low, and freezing temperatures, as stressful signals that can cause physiological defects and even death. As sessile organisms, plants have evolved sophisticated mechanisms to adapt to recurring stressful environments through changing gene expression or transcriptional reprogramming. Transcriptional memory refers to the ability of primed plants to remember previously experienced stress and acquire enhanced tolerance to similar or different stresses. Epigenetic modifications mediate transcriptional memory and play a key role in adapting to adverse temperatures. Understanding the mechanisms of the formation, maintenance, and resetting of stress-induced transcriptional memory will not only enable us to understand why there is a trade-off between plant defense and growth, but also provide a theoretical basis for generating stress-tolerant crops optimized for future climate change. In this review, we summarize recent advances in dissecting the mechanisms of plant transcriptional memory in response to adverse temperatures, based mainly on studies of the model plant . We also discuss remaining questions that are important for further understanding the mechanisms of transcriptional memory during the adverse temperature response.
Topics: Acclimatization; Arabidopsis; Climate Change; Gene Expression Regulation, Plant; Heat-Shock Response; Plant Development; Temperature; Transcription, Genetic
PubMed: 34636184
DOI: 10.1631/jzus.B2100287 -
ELife Feb 2022Sensorimotor learning is supported by at least two parallel systems: a strategic process that benefits from explicit knowledge and an implicit process that adapts...
Sensorimotor learning is supported by at least two parallel systems: a strategic process that benefits from explicit knowledge and an implicit process that adapts subconsciously. How do these systems interact? Does one system's contributions suppress the other, or do they operate independently? Here, we illustrate that during reaching, implicit and explicit systems both learn from visual target errors. This shared error leads to competition such that an increase in the explicit system's response siphons away resources that are needed for implicit adaptation, thus reducing its learning. As a result, steady-state implicit learning can vary across experimental conditions, due to changes in strategy. Furthermore, strategies can mask changes in implicit learning properties, such as its error sensitivity. These ideas, however, become more complex in conditions where subjects adapt using multiple visual landmarks, a situation which introduces learning from sensory prediction errors in addition to target errors. These two types of implicit errors can oppose each other, leading to another type of competition. Thus, during sensorimotor adaptation, implicit and explicit learning systems compete for a common resource: error.
Topics: Acclimatization; Humans; Knowledge
PubMed: 35225229
DOI: 10.7554/eLife.65361 -
International Journal of Molecular... Nov 2022Forest trees are complex perennial organisms that are adapted to the local environment in the results of prevailing climate conditions in population history. Because... (Review)
Review
Forest trees are complex perennial organisms that are adapted to the local environment in the results of prevailing climate conditions in population history. Because they lead a sedentary lifestyle, plants are exposed to various environmental stimuli, such as changes which can lead to the rapid adjustment or failure of their defence mechanisms. As forests play a key role in environment homeostasis and are the source of many products, it is crucial to estimate the role of forest trees' plasticity mechanisms in the face of the climate change. Fast epigenetic adjustment is the basis for surviving climate fluctuations, however the question is whether this mechanism will be also efficient if climate fluctuations increase. Epigenetic modifications enable rapid reactions to the inducing stimulus by establishing chromatin patterns and manipulating gene expression without affecting the DNA itself. This work aimed to gather information about the epigenetic mechanisms of tree responses to changing environmental conditions, in order to summarise what is known so far and emphasize the significance of the discussed issue. Applying this knowledge in the future to study the interactions between climate change and gene regulation at the levels of plant development could generate answers to questions about the limitations of plasticity of plant adaptation to changing environment. We still know very little about how organisms, especially trees, cope with climate change and we believe that this overview will encourage researchers to fill this gap in the knowledge, and that results will be applied in improving defensive capacity of this ecologically and economically important species.
Topics: Trees; Forests; Climate Change; Acclimatization; Epigenesis, Genetic; Plants
PubMed: 36362192
DOI: 10.3390/ijms232113412 -
Evolution; International Journal of... Aug 2022Developmental and adult environments can interact in complex ways to influence the fitness of individuals. Most studies investigating effects of the environment on...
Developmental and adult environments can interact in complex ways to influence the fitness of individuals. Most studies investigating effects of the environment on fitness focus on environments experienced and traits expressed at a single point in an organism's life. However, environments vary with time, so the effects of the environments that organisms experience at different ages may interact to affect how traits change throughout life. Here, we test whether thermal stress experienced during development leads individuals to cope better with thermal stress as adults. We manipulated temperature during both development and adulthood and measured a range of life-history traits, including senescence, in male and female seed beetles (Callosobruchus maculatus). We found that thermal stress during development reduced adult reproductive performance of females. In contrast, life span and age-dependent mortality were affected more by adult than developmental environments, with high adult temperatures decreasing longevity and increasing age-dependent mortality. Aside from an interaction between developmental and adult environments to affect age-dependent changes in male weight, we did not find any evidence of a beneficial acclimation response to developmental thermal stress. Overall, our results show that effects of developmental and adult environments can be both sex and trait specific, and that a full understanding of how environments interact to affect fitness and ageing requires the integrated study of conditions experienced during different stages of ontogeny.
Topics: Acclimatization; Aging; Animals; Coleoptera; Female; Hot Temperature; Male; Temperature
PubMed: 35819127
DOI: 10.1111/evo.14567 -
International Journal of Environmental... Mar 2021Climate change represents a serious threat to the health and well-being of populations. Today, many countries, regions, and cities around the world are implementing... (Review)
Review
Climate change represents a serious threat to the health and well-being of populations. Today, many countries, regions, and cities around the world are implementing policies and strategies to adapt to climate change and mitigate its effects. A scoping review was performed to identify tools and methods that help integrate health into climate change adaptation and mitigation policies and strategies. The literature search includes scientific and grey literature. The scientific literature was conducted using PubMed, Elsevier Embase, and Web of Science databases. A grey literature web search was performed to complement the results. A total of 35 studies (28 from the scientific literature and 7 from the grey literature) were finally included. A large majority of research articles (24/28) and almost all reports (6/7) from the grey literature were published after 2010. Results show that the tools that were found most frequently are the nested models (12/35), health impact assessment (6/35), vulnerability and adaptation assessment (3/35), conceptual frameworks (3/35), and mixed methods (3/35). This review shows an increasing interest in the topic of developing tools to better manage health issues in adaptation and mitigation strategies, with a recent increase in the number of publications. Additional analyses of tools' effectiveness should be conducted in further studies.
Topics: Acclimatization; Climate Change; Policy
PubMed: 33806462
DOI: 10.3390/ijerph18052547